"Thank you, Mr. Waddington, I'm afraid I've waited quite long enough. It isn't worth while troubling Kimber to drive me a hundred yards." It gave her pleasure to inflict that snub on Mr. Waddington in return for his manoeuvre. As the meeting had now broken up, and there wouldn't be anybody to witness her departure in the Waddingtons' car, Mrs. Levitt calculated that she could afford that little gratification of her feelings. They were intensified by Mr. Waddington's very evident distress. He would have walked home with her the hundred yards to Sheep Street, but she wouldn't hear of it. She was perfectly capable of seeing herself home. Miss Madden was waiting for him. Good night. 4 Eleven o'clock. In the library where Mr. Waddington was drinking his whisky and water, Fanny had been crying. Horry had stalked off to his bedroom without saying good night to anybody. Barbara had retired discreetly. Ralph Bevan had gone. And when Fanny thought of the lavender bags Susan-Nanna sent every year at Christmas, she had cried. "How could you _do_ it, Horatio? How _could_ you?" "There was nothing else to be done. You can't expect me to take your sentimental, view of Ballinger." "It isn't Ballinger. It's poor Susan-Nanna and the babies, and the lavender bags." Mr. Waddington swayed placably up and down on the tips of his toes. "It serves poor Susan-Nanna right for marrying Ballinger." "Oh--I suppose it serves _me_ right, too--" Though she clenched her hands tight, tight, she couldn't keep back that little spurt of anger. He was smiling his peculiar, voluptuous smile. "Serves you right? For spoiling everybody in the village? It does indeed." "You don't in the least see what I mean," said Fanny. But, after all, she was glad he hadn't seen it. He hadn't seen anything. He hadn't seen that she had been crying. It had never dawned on him that she might care about Susan-Nanna, or that the Ballingers might love their home, their garden and their lavender bushes. He was like that. He didn't see things, and he didn't care. He was back in his triumph of the evening, going over the compliments and congratulations, again and again--"Best speech ever made in the Town Hall--" But there was something--something he had left out. "Did it never dawn on you--" said Fanny. Ah, _now_ he had it. "There!" he said. "I knew I'd forgotten something. I never put in that bit about the darkest hour before dawn." Fanny's mind had wandered from what she had been going to say. "Did you see what Horry did?" she said instead. "Everybody could see it. It was most unnecessary." "I don't care. Think, Horatio. Think of his sticking up for you like that. He was going to fight them, the dear thing, all those great rough men. To fight them for _you_. He said he'd behave better than anybody else, and he did."